Call for Submissions

Games in Action (the e-zine)

a decomp journal e-zine


decomp journal is now accepting unpublished work for its sixth themed online zine, “Games in Action (the e-zine) ”

"Games in Action (the e-zine)" is a collaborative effort between UBC's decomp journal and “Games in action: interactivity / activation \ activism" - the largest event organized on UBC campus to focus on video games and their social and political impacts. This two day event will feature discussions among game designers, artists, musicians, scholars, and writers, to explore how games act upon us and through us, and how they compel us to take action for ourselves. 


The video game is an adolescent medium. The medium, not yet even a centurion, has expanded from text-based adventure to 2-dimensional side scroller, roughly-honed polygons to smooth, raytraced skins - though not linearly. Recent developments like No Code’s The House Abandon, a text-based horror-adventure, or any number of works from Puppet Combo, whose art style seeks to replicate low-polygonal aesthetics born of late-millenium hardware constraints, prove that the medium’s strengths lie not in aesthetic advancement, but in its ability to draw users in. Though the genre of "video game" is vast - from sweet relationships built through sprawling, text-based visual novels to the meaningful horror of death-rebirth cycles in Soulslikes - a video game is defined wholly by its relationship with the player. Unlike film or literature, whose stories remain predestined, whose characters can live the same life a thousand times in the background of a daily chore, half-involved on a long car ride - the video game demands engagement.


The conference itself hinges around the following: that "players act upon games, and games act upon them". We invite artists to share their thoughts on interactivity, intentionality, and the  relationship between medium and audience. We ask that you share not just your final products, but your drafts, designs and ideas as well. We seek to explore the intention that goes into each step of the process, between early development sketches and the Steam homepage.


Decomp is a multimedia journal, which means no format is unwelcome! This e-zine will accept the following:

  • Musical compositions

  • Character designs and assets

  • Storyboards

  • Scripts

  • Demos

  • Fully-developed games

  • Non-fiction pieces (like essays) that discuss video games as media



We welcome submissions that do not necessarily conform to these genres or experiment, bend, and play with them. Please ensure submissions can be published on a digital platform, where decomp journal and zines are housed!

Submission & Guidelines: Submit your work after reviewing our guidelines at https://decompjournal.com/submit

Note: decomp journal uses a third-party platform called Submittable to process submissions. We encourage sending submissions before the deadline in case of any technical issues.


DEADLINE TO SUBMIT: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2022 @ 11:59 PM (PST)

submit


Questions or concerns? Contact us:

b.lemckert@alumni.ubc.ca

Website: https://decompjournal.com

Instagram/Twitter: @decompjournal

Facebook: decompmagazine

[decomp journal Guidelines]

All submissions should be sent in using our online submittable platform. 

  • For Prose: 8,000 words maximum. If you write pieces that are under 1,000 words, feel free to submit two.

  • Art/other media: We accept art across all mediums as long as they can be uploaded in JPG, mp3 or mp4 files

We only accept previously unpublished work and yes, we consider websites, blogs, youtube channels, etc, as previously published.

We readily encourage simultaneous submissions, all we ask is that you notify us when another market accepts your work.

We aim to respond to submission within 90 days. If you don’t hear from us at all please reach out.

Unfortunately, there is no payment at this time.

If your work is accepted, it is subject to minor editing and copyrighted upon publication, plus you automatically grant us First North American Serial Rights to publish it first and Archival Rights to archive it online. Rights revert back to the author upon publication. If a piece of yours is reprinted, please mention it appeared in decomp first.